Slighty off topic but here goes
Theatre's Bogdanov reflects on his scandalous history
Thirty years after he went on trial at London's Old Bailey for staging an act of simulated male sex in the play The Romans in Britain, the renowned British theatre director Michael Bogdanov, says he is proud to have been "among those people willing to stand up and be counted".
"It was extraordinary to have found yourself a symbol of freedom of expression, though for the wrong reasons," the 73-year old Bogdanov tells the BBC World Service's Witness programme on the 30th anniversary of his trial.
Accused of procuring an act of "gross indecency" likely to cause offence for his production of The Romans in Britain at London's National Theatre, Bogdanov says he felt "enormous relief" when the case collapsed and the prosecution withdrew its evidence on the third day of the hearing.
He also says he felt "very angry" that the private prosecution brought by the morality campaigner Mary Whitehouse had been allowed to happen at all.
Mrs Whitehouse, he says, "confused reality with an illusion" on the stage. If he had been convicted, Bogdanov could have been jailed for up to three years.
Written by the playwright Howard Brenton, The Romans in Britain, which opened in London in October 1980, was always likely to provoke controversy.
With vivid imagery, strong language and violence, the play sought to draw graphic parallels between the Romans' invasion of the British Isles and the presence at the time of British soldiers on the streets of Northern Ireland.
But it was one short scene involving the attempted rape of a young Druid called Marban by a Roman soldier ("a metaphor for the rape of one culture by another," according to the director), that eventually landed Bogdanov in court.
When he was first handed the play by the National's then artistic director, Sir Peter Hall, Bogdanov says he thought it contained some of the best new writing he had read. The attempted rape scene, to be performed with naked actors in full light and centre-stage, was "brilliantly written".
But though nudity was not uncommon on the stage - and Bogdanov was careful that no sexual contact was actually made between the actors (the Roman used his bunched up fist and thumb as a substitute for his erect penis) - Sir Peter was clearly worried. He asked Bogdanov to consider moving the scene upstage, in half light.
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